Interview With Matt Roskilly From ROAM

Sunday, 23 October 2016

So today is another interview! Before my holiday I had the opportunity to interview Matt Roskilly from ROAM.

ROAM have been around since 2012 and are doing fantastically well for themselves. The band is made up of five members, Alex Costello (vocals), Matt Roskilly (bassist), Alex Adam (backing vocals and guitar), Sam Veness (guitar) and Miles Gill (drums). They have travelled virtually everywhere and are soon to be headed on their first headline tour in 2 years, you can buy tickets HERE.

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You formed back in
September 2012, where did the name Roam come from?

We get asked this a lot, basically at the time we struggled
to come up with a name. As every band will know it’s hard to find a name as its
going to define you for the whole time you are a band. So we decided we were
basically going to scroll through an IPod and choose words that we thought were
cool. We came across Roam. We thought the word Roam works for what we want to
do. We want travel and see things so it sort of suited us.

I wouldn’t have
thought of that way!

Yeah it was kind of a last ditch effort, we were stuck!

You’re album
‘Backbone’ was released in January this year, how long did it take to write?

We are constantly writing, we have always got ideas. There
were ideas for backbone that dated back to early 2015. So towards the end of
2015 we put aside some time to make sure we were writing. We were touring at
the time but took a month off to absolutely blitz it. It was really a collection
of ideas that all came together after a while.

It was probably a year in the writing but the actual focus
of the writing of the album was in a couple of months. We were still writing parts in the studio,
and were a bit unprepared honestly.

Everyone’s happy with
it so far.

What’s your favourite
song off the album?

Oh that’s tough, I really like to play ’Cabin Fever’ it’s
the opening track and has a lot of impact behind it and its really fun to play.
I also like ‘All the same’ which I think is the third track. Those two I really like because they are
quite pop punky sort of thing.

Then we have ‘Deadweight’ which is the darker side which I
love. I don’t know, it’s hard to choose!

It’s like trying to choose one of your favourite children!

So you have voice
recordings at the beginning of your songs where did that come from?

You mean the start of the album we have that weird
thing? It was just us messing around
with the idea. It’s one of those things that we had spoken about in the van and
thought it would be really funny to do. Our driver in the States at the time,
said ‘Yeah I’ll do it!’

It was one of those
weird things that happened and we ended up keeping it. We like it, it’s really cheesy but kind of
funny!

It looks like you had
plenty of fun recording the music videos ‘Deadweight’ and ‘Hopeless Case’. Who
came up with the ideas for them?

Us and our mate Elliot, with every music video we have done
so far, Elliot filmed and directed them. He is a close friend of ours from home
and now he’s off touring with ‘State Champs’ and ‘Paris’ , ‘Crown the Empire’
and stuff like that, he’s doing really well. We always get him back for our
videos so it has the same feel for it.

We sort of write the idea and the fun side of it, like we
say ‘wouldn’t it be funny if we dressed up as army men and run around with
guns’.

That is not like us at all, we wanted to go the exact
opposite and go really manly, tough, when that is exactly what we are not!

A lot of people thought it was a quite serious video.

For ‘Hopeless case’ we were going to Las Vegas and thought
let’s just make a joke out of it, have an excuse to wear fancy dress!

So you are going on
your first UK headline tour in November, What shows are you looking forward to
playing the most?

I think London is the biggest headline show. I am looking
forward to Brighton. Brighton is like our home town, we live in Eastbourne
which is twenty minutes down the road from Brighton. We have a lot of family
and friends coming to watch us.

What’s the funniest
thing you have received from a fan?

Alex got a T-shirt of the Jonas Brothers and they had
printed his face on one of the Jonas Brothers’ faces. That was pretty funny.

I had some cool shoes given to me but that’s not funny, they
were pretty cool though.

I am trying to think, funny wise probably just pictures and
stuff, people draw funny things for us, they like our sense of humour, they
like to come and give us stuff. We know they love us, we are normally friends
with everyone we talk to when they come to shows. They always bring us funny
things.

There was a toy, Beyblade we used to play with when we were
really young, six or seven, we actually asked for a load and people started
bringing them to shows, trading them. We started having Beyblade battles. That
was fun.

In a few days you
will be heading over to Australia to tour alongside ‘With Confidence’ how did
this all come about?

We went over to Japan for the first time earlier this year
with them and ‘The Wonder Years’ and a band called ‘Cautioners’. That was the first time we had met them, about
five six months ago, since then we have toured with them there, we have done
Slam Dunk with them, now we are off to Australia with them.

We just sort of clicked with them, they are
Aussies and kind of have a similar sense of humour to us and are really funny
guys.

Really excited for it, I haven’t packed yet so I really need
to do that!

What’s the first
thing you are going to do there when you touch down, apart from sleep
obviously?

Sleep and complain about the heat probably!

We try and see as much of these places as we can, we are
very lucky to get to go to these places so we try our best to actually have a
look around, see some sites and maybe go out for a drink, if we are still
awake!

So you are not going
to try surfing?

No, I want to try surfing but not as soon as we get there. I
don’t want to be fighting off sharks!

What can we expect
from ROAM in 2017?

Plenty more touring I am sure, we have been pretty much non-
stop but we love it. I have been home
for about four or five weeks and I am so bored!

We are writing album two which we are really excited for. We
have started that now and have maybe two or three songs written, when we get
back from Australia we have a big gap where we are going to be writing loads.
Hopefully we will get an album out next year!

Do you have a name
for it yet?

No, its early days, none of the three songs we have are
named yet.

Can you give us some
hints for the new songs?

I don’t know really we are just seeing what we can write,
trying to make them sound bigger and better. The songs we do have are the best
material we have written so we are excited for that. It’s a lot of pressure but
I can’t wait to get some new material.

Do you have a message
for your fans?

Thank you so much, without fans and the people that support
us we wouldn’t be able to do the things we are doing. I am going to Australia
for the first time and I am so excited, I would never have gone otherwise. I
have been to Japan and that is all because of fans, so thank you!